Warning Sign
by KristieConspiracy
Summary: Everyone has a past. Every Hogwarts professor had a childhood, a life, friends outside the staff. Professor Babbling just happens to be friends with a famous author and the first casualty of the Second Wizarding War. Written for the Completely Stumped Challenge on HPFC, prompts listed within.


**Challenge:** Crimson's Void's _the Completely Stumped Challenge_, on HPFC

**Characters: **Bathsheba Babbling, Newton Scamander, Frank Bryce

**Prompt: **Sentence 13. "I had a trying time convincing her to come to the party, so I really hoped that the entire party didn't implode when everyone found out I invited her."  
Sentence 24: "Though I knew that staying friends until our old age was a long shot, I never thought I would step over his corpse as I entered the throne room."  
Song 6: _This is War_ - 30 Seconds to Mars  
Image 3: a lovely picture of _aurora borealis_  
Characters - male 6 and 78, Frank Bryce and Newt Scamander; female 2, Bathsheba Babbling

**Word count: **883

**A/N: **This was a rather odd combination, but their murky pasts made it easier. I'm not exactly happy with this story - it annoys me and feels like a drabble piece. I don't like writing plotless pieces.

* * *

"The Dark Lord will return, Miss Babbling. Mark my words: this is war."

"Mister Scamander, please. I've asked you to call me Bathsheba countless times, or Batty. I've known you all my life, the least you could do is show me that kindness. And starting a floo call with such ominous tidings! Really, Newt, you don't have Frank's excuses of blooming senility."

The wizard in the green fire, gifted with a large nose, sagging jowls and bizarrely large ears, scoffed. Bathsheba, the Ancient Runes professor at Hogwarts, smiled at her old friend. She'd grown up in Little Hangleton with the old author watching over her when her parents were busy. Her father worked as a curse breaker and spent most of his time travelling abroad. Since, when he was home, he argued with her mother, who translated ancient documents for the Ministry and interested buyers, Newt cared more often for their daughter than not.

"Frank is dead, Batty."

Her smile fell from her pale face, and she felt dread pool in her gut. "You think You-Know-Who killed him?"

"I know he did. I found him in the old Riddle house, dear, the wards broken. Only one of _that_ bloodline can break them."

Bathsheba ran through this information quietly, leaning against the front of her desk as she stared blankly at her friends' head. _Frank Bryce, dead?_ But the old man had been harmless! Yes, he'd had a temper, and maybe he did shoot some muggles in the war. That didn't mean that he deserved to die!

"The funeral is next Thursday. Can you come?"

She blinked dark eyes at the old wizard, surprised by the question. "Funeral?"

"He didn't have any family left, except a niece who never knew him. I'm arranging everything. Will you come?"

She continued to stare at him, chewing on her lip. Forty years old, and the habit had yet to die. "I don't know..."

He pleaded for an hour. He begged the woman, really, the witch he'd cared for more often than her parents had while she grew up. He'd taken her to Diagon Alley when she was preparing for Hogwarts, eleven years old and still so innocent. He'd watched her wand choose her, over all the other students who came in that day! If anyone knew how stubborn she could be, it was him.

"I - I'll think about it, Newt," she finally agreed.

"That's all I can ask."

And the fire went dark.

* * *

"The thing won't implode if she puts in an appearance," Newton Scamander grumbled to no one, leaning heavily on an oak-wood cane. He wished he could pace, because he detested having to wait. "The nerve of that witch!"

"The nerve of who, Mister Scamander? Me?"

He felt as though he had perhaps cracked his neck from moving to look at her too quickly, but he was quick enough to watch her lower the hood of her cloak, the moonlight catching on her pale face. Her jaw was square, her dark eyes small and her nose perfectly straight, her black hair cropped beneath her ears and impossible to separate from the darkness around her. She looked unnaturally stretched in her night-dark robes, her head hovering somewhere above Newt as though disembodied.

"Ah, Bathsheba. You get taller each time I see you."

"Don't be daft, Newt," she murmured, and gave him a hug before facing the grave. "Magical ceremony?"

"I'm unfamiliar with the muggle alternative, so yes."

The witch didn't watch him as he spoke, though, her gaze instead roving over the dead muggle in his casket. "Poor Frank," she whispered at last, leaning down to kiss his cold, dead cheek. "He never deserved this."

"He was old, for a muggle. Seventy-seven years last month. I met him for tea to celebrate."

"I missed it," she said sadly, watching as her old friend waved his wand. The hand-crafted coffin floated into the hole, followed by the dirt. It was a morbid sight, a life covered up just like it had never existed.

"There, there, Batty. No need to fret. It was foolish to think we'd all be friends until our old age, regardless of the Dark Lord and his games."

"Some game. And I am not old!"

"Exactly my point, funnily enough. I was always going to die before you got old, child. Frank Bryce was always likely to go first, if only because he was a muggle. Though I never expected to step over his body in a sitting room arranged like a throne room."

"What?"

"Just an observation. Everyone has their moment to die, child. This must have been Frank's: to herald a warning to the rest of us. It's up to us to heed it - or to not."

"I'll tell Dumbledore when I go back. But first ... _aurora borealis anniversarium quotannis_." A green-blue light, not unlike the famously beautiful Northern Lights, erupted from the tip of the wand he'd watch choose her all those years ago. "Every year on this night, they'll play again, for as long as I live."

"And nothing imploded."

"What?"

Newt smiled as the witch hugged her, amused with his ability to confuse her. "Nothing, dear."

"You're insane, Newt. Completely mad."

"At least I'm having fun with the little time of peace we have left."


End file.
